I want to upscale my DVD !

[kikounet]

MeGUI doesn't allow me to upscale my 720 pixels wide DVD.
I would like to keep the original number of lines and widen the image according to anamorphic ratio.
Why no option in MeGUI to go beyond the original picture width?
I think bicubic software resize would be better than what my TV do on-the-fly?
Actually I manually edit the Avisynth script with notepad before opening th job.
:confused:

[tebasuna51]

You can always edit your avs in the Script tab of AviSynth script creator without use Notepad.

But automatic methods must avoid upscale.

[kikounet]

You can always edit your avs in the Script tab of AviSynth script creator without use Notepad.

But automatic methods must avoid upscale.

:thanks: for your answer and for this tip.

However, I still doesn't understand why we "must" avoid upscale... :confused:

[jkauff]

However, I still doesn't understand why we "must" avoid upscale... :confused:
I don't know the technical answer, but I'm guessing it's much like upsampling audio--too much chance of introducing artifacts, plus you lose a generation. Upscale on playback is probably the preferred method.

[fantasmanegro]

i guess it is simple, you will not get better quality, just a big image besides big file size...

[hello_hello]

MeGUI doesn't allow me to upscale my 720 pixels wide DVD.
I would like to keep the original number of lines and widen the image according to anamorphic ratio.
Why no option in MeGUI to go beyond the original picture width?

Yeah, I find that annoying too, but editing the resizing in the script tab is the way around it (or editing after you've saved the script). Just remember if you make any changes in the Script Creator GUI, MeGUI will re-write the entire script, so you'll need to re-enter your manual changes. That's kind of annoying too.
I use this calculator a bit to work out the correct resizing after cropping if I want to resize "up". Yoda Resize Calculator (http://www.mediafire.com/?09v9bldu9a6hm00)
I wish MeGUI would do the same thing. Turn "red" to let you know you're resizing up, but not stop you from actually doing it.

I think bicubic software resize would be better than what my TV do on-the-fly?
Actually I manually edit the Avisynth script with notepad before opening th job.

Here's my take....
I was an "anamorphic encoding" guy for quite a while, but the introduction of a couple of devices in the house which don't support aspect ratios in MKV/MP4 files gave me a reason to re-think that a little, so I did some experimenting, comparing anamorphic encodes to "resized" encodes, and now I'm a "resized encoding" guy.

I used my Plasma TV and MPC-HC to compare encodes so I can't vouch for how a Bluray/hardware player or TV might upscale. The PC outputs 1080p to the TV so I assume when running video fullscreen the player does all the resizing.
Spline36 ended up being my resizer of choice for encoding. It seemed to retain more fine detail than anamorphic encoding, even when using a bicubic resizer in MPC-HC on playback. It's definitely a little sharper. A combination of Spline36 when encoding and bicubic in MPC-HC to upscale the encode to fullscreen produces quite sharp results.... maybe almost too sharp on occasion.... but I generally use a Bilinear resizer in MPC-HC (I prefer a softer resizer for lower quality video).
So for me, the "spline36 when encoding", "Bilinear upscaling on playback" combination gave me the result I liked the most. It looked a little better than the original DVD, regardless of which resizer I used in MPC-HC. Anamorphic encoding produced the result I liked the least. It was always somewhat "softer" than the original DVD even when using a sharp resizer in MPC-HC on playback.

Mind you the differences are fairly minor in the overall scheme of things, but the results weren't quite what I expected. I performed the above comparisons using the x264 encoder's default settings and didn't experiment with x264 tunings to see how much difference they'd make.

So due to the above, and the hardware player annoyance, I've now switched to resizing "up" when encoding. For NTSC DVDs I just use 854x480 (assuming no cropping). After some further experimenting I've settled on 960x540 for PAL to keep the file sizes down (1024x576 takes you into HD file size territory). With spline36 resizing when encoding, 960x540 still looks a little sharper than the original DVD on my TV, and definitely sharper than an anamorphic encode (MPC-HC doing the resizing again).

[kikounet]

I wish MeGUI would do the same thing. Turn "red" to let you know you're resizing up, but not stop you from actually doing it.
Thanks Hello,
I Wish exactly that : a warning, but no prohibition! :)

For a 4/3 PAL DVD (720x576), I upscale to 768x576 (real 4/3).
For movies ratio 1,85 to 2,25 I try to keep the same number of lines (576), minus the black borders. Then I multiply the result by 1,85 to 2,25 accordingly.

A width of 1024 is not really HD, it's just the width of an iPad screen (for instance) so the player has no overwork to fill the display during playback.
My point is to get a file size about 1,4 GB, never reaching 2,0 GB to fit on any FAT32 device like USB sticks for instance.

Just for fun, I also tried to upscale a DVD to 1280x720p (minus black top&bottom borders).
At around 3000 Kbps (avoiding the 4,7 GB limit) the result seemed to me better than what my TV does on-the-fly. ;)

[hello_hello]

A width of 1024 is not really HD, it's just the width of an iPad screen (for instance) so the player has no overwork to fill the display during playback.
My point is to get a file size about 1,4 GB, never reaching 2,0 GB to fit on any FAT32 device like USB sticks for instance.

1024x576 isn't all that far off 1280x720. And given much "720p video" would actually be cropped and encoded at something like 1280x544 or 1280x528 etc, 1024x576 PAL upscaling gets you close to the same number of pixels, without as much of the fun stuff such as fine detail, and as it's not always great quality it can be harder to compress....

My motivation for reducing the resolution to 960x540 is pretty much the same as yours.... just to keep the file sizes down. I prefer to drop the resolution a bit and use the same quality setting each time rather than do it the other way around, so it's just a different way to achieve the same thing, I guess. If resizing PAL DVDs to 960x540 lost any detail compared to 1024x576 I'd just use the latter, but it doesn't seem to.

Isn't 4GB the file size limit for fat32?

[vid.user]

My point is to get a file size about 1,4 GB, never reaching 2,0 GB to fit on any FAT32 device like USB sticks for instance.

Isn't 4GB the file size limit for fat32?

Yep, it sure is.

[hello_hello]

Have you updated MeGUI yet? The ability to resize "up" has now been added to the AVS Script Creator!

[kikounet]

Have you updated MeGUI yet? The ability to resize "up" has now been added to the AVS Script Creator!
I am up to date, but still can't resize "up".
(I can however manually edit the Avisynth script in the third tab...)
Where did you see the way to overcome the limitation?
:stupid:

[dbart]

use RipBot :). I'm archiving my old DVDs, with denoise, deinterlace, upscale, crop unnecesary black borders, ....

[Zathor]

I am up to date, but still can't resize "up".
(I can however manually edit the Avisynth script in the third tab...)
Where did you see the way to overcome the limitation?
:stupid:

Which build do you have 2287 is the most recent one on the development side. Additionally you have to enable upsizing in the AviSynth profile settings.

[rica]

You can always edit your avs in the Script tab of AviSynth script creator without use Notepad.

But automatic methods must avoid upscale.

It seems very clear, isn't it?

[kikounet]

Which build do you have 2287 is the most recent one on the development side. Additionally you have to enable upsizing in the AviSynth profile settings.
Thank you very much.
1) I was under 2237 build (I forgot to launch with administrator's privileges).
2) Thank you for the clue on AviSynth advanced options :

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8530/8453396132_3c7c39f24e_b.jpg

:thanks:

[Ghitulescu]

At around 3000 Kbps (avoiding the 4,7 GB limit) the result seemed to me better than what my TV does on-the-fly. ;)
Most TVs do not scale properly the SD material, just because they are so cheap. The same is also true for cheap BDplayers or "upscaling" DVDplayers. If people would trade the wasted time (time is money) and the lost electricity (which also costs money) needed for reencodes and stuff for a better TV or playback device, they would be far more rewarded, at least because they don't need to postpone the playback of a movie for the duration of a reencode, in particular when he's having a paty and one guest brought the movie :).
Exception to the rule are of course the special devices (tablets and cellphones and other portables), that do not have the movie-playback as their primary function (but are sold because of this).

[Honeyko]

i guess it is simple, you will not get better quality, just a big image besides big file size...
Depending upon the DVD, you can not only get better quality, but MUCH better quality -- but you have to know the tricks, or it's a waste of time.

Example: an "early" (1990s) DVD of a grainbomb 1980s movie. Upscaling/degraining/denoising will the filth AND get rid of the aliasing most of these movies suffer from (which is very noticeable in swoopy-font title credits; e.g., "Dragonslayer"). IMO you only need to upscale 33% vertically and horizontally or so to get rid of the aliasing (720p represents a 50% upscaling from 480p).

(Note: it'll never be as good as a rip of blu-ray, so don't bother if such a source is also available.)

[setarip_old]

@kikounet

Hi!

You might want to try the upscaling/upconverting capability of multiAVCHD...